Not AvailableCastor genotypes (30) were evaluated for ten yield and yield attributing characters to study the genetic diversity existing among them by using Mahalanobis D2 statistics. Analysis of variance revealed significant difference among genotypes for all the ten character studied. Based on the D2 values the genotypes were grouped into six different clusters. Maximum inter cluster distance was observed between III and VI (6170.49) while, lowest divergence was noticed between clusters I and II (742.33) indicating close relationship and similarity for most of the traits of the genotypes in this cluster. Among the nine clusters studied, yield at 180 days contributed highest towards genetic divergence (48.74%). Principal component (PC) analysis revealed that first three PC axes explained 72.48% of the total multivariate variation while the first five PC axes explaining 88.94%. These results have an important implication for castor germplasm characterization, improvement, agro morphological evaluation and conservation.Not Availabl
